Post

Sen, but Spooky
@dresdencodak.com

Cartoonists, I'm begging you: have your own website with your comics on it. You can post them elsewhere too if you want, but I'm telling you, do not ever rely on a social media platform to keep you afloat. They're not there to make you money, they're there to make money off you.

520 reposts2.1K likes

Jason Parton
@jasongrvin.bsky.social

As someone much smarter that me once said about social media... If you're not buying something, you're the product. It's super easy to setup a website of your own and it's really not all that expensive to get some good hosting.

apophis
@apophis.girlonthemoon.xyz

we might be looking back fondly on the days when we were the product rather than merely the natural resource to be extracted and pulverized and rendered into fuel for the product (equity and futures)

Funkybat - Kevin W.
@funkybat.bsky.social

We're collectively going to need to build new ways of connecting & discovering media. IG, Tumblr, YouTube etc. all once helped "nobodies" to go viral, or at least build an audience over time. Algo fuckery has made that a rigged deal. We need to re-establish something like Webrings or Usenet groups.

eMoss
@art.mossycircuits.gay

As a reader of many web comics, absolutely! Please have it on a website! There are too many comics that I haven't been able to keep up with because I had to rely on seeing the posts come up in my feed, not to mention the ones I didn't even start because there was no archive or even previous button

Funkybat - Kevin W.
@funkybat.bsky.social

Not just comics, but everyone, needs to move back towards an early-2000s model of Internet use, where people ran individual websites, and affiliated sites & interest groups would link with one another (webrings? Pepperidge Farms remembers!) Social Mierda is inherently corrupt and manipulated.

Sam Concklin
@concklincomics.bsky.social

Yep! The enshittification process has hit Webtoon already — they pay their creators so little that MANY of their big series now have quality control issues. And you can bet that if you’re not one of their darlings, they’re not pushing your series! #comics #webcomic #webcomics #webtoon

Cheri Cornelli
@chericornelli.bsky.social

Exactly and the same is for platforms where you can post your webcomic (webtoon, tapas, etc). Protect the rights to your work and make sure you read their TOS very closely! You'll find they sneak in some very ambiguous rules regarding rights to your work.

Bam
@kwotebel.bsky.social

I work in this industry & can say that investing in your own platform, marketing to your fans, delivering your work directly to them instead of through intermediaries, means that you'll do as good or better $$ than using a conduit that pays pennies on the dollar even if the user base is larger!

icespoon.bsky.social
@icespoon.bsky.social

And with a snap of a finger, nobody will see your art in [social media platform you're using] because of algorithm. At least with your own site, you can rely on a random asking by your art in 2027 and you have your backup.

Sen, but Spooky
@dresdencodak.com

Half the reason I've been able to live off my comic since 2007 is because I've always made sure I own and host my own work. Social media can offer you money sometimes, but it's inherently volatile, and you're at the mercy of invisible algorithms. Use it as advertising first, anything else is a bonus

Sen, but Spooky
@dresdencodak.com

Even if you're not trying to go pro, having your own website with your own work on it means you have a stable place where you keep everything, plus a tangible copyright for when ghouls try to steal/scrape your work.